


House of Aftershocks

by bioluminesce



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Gen, Hugh | Third of Five Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioluminesce/pseuds/bioluminesce
Summary: After Seven forms her new collective, it’s hard for her to let go.
Relationships: Elnor & Seven of Nine, Seven of Nine & Hugh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 91





	House of Aftershocks

The cube worked like an ecosystem. Sections had been drained and started dying, pulling power from places that once flourished. Everything worked in harmony, as close to perpetual motion as machines could be. Efficient, seductive, smooth — as clean and regimented as a slaughterhouse line.

Seven smelled electrical burn as new nanoprobes sizzled into her back. When the first jolt of the queencell’s interface hit, she slammed inside the cube already, all the arms and power plants of it, back in the writhing, metal dark.The green-black room where she stood had been replaced by the green-black network in which she flew. She knew what to do with this. It just took some switches flipped and communications connections persuaded. It took accesses she had only seen as distant enticements before, but which she understood now. It took an element of what she still saw as queenliness—open channels, admin access, the power to control the thousands of bodies she now felt in the walls. 

Why not use those bodies? They existed at her fingertips. They served as her fingertips.

The Romulan agent blew a sector’s airlocks. Seven’s body screamed as the flash cold of space hit her hundred drones. Her throats began to close, and Annika got ready to cry, but the newborn queen shunted the drone data to a muted channel. Seven hated how quickly she knew how to do it. Those captives—those people—deserved better than this. But after all, she needed to save them, and for the one cell block Narissa destroyed, tens more waited.

The queen opened them all.

The swarm filled the hallways. Seven had never experienced a fight from this perspective before, but now it became irrelevant which perspective she watched from. Surely from the queen’s cradle there was less pain. Sensations from individual units felt less immediate, even as she knew she could change that.

Narissa had murdered her people, killed Hugh, set her lot against Picard, and did it all more coldly than even a hardened, bitter, tired Fenris Ranger could stand.

Seven enjoyed swarming her. She inhabited the weight of all those drones, their synapses sparking new, some connections not refined yet because they had all been in stasis for so long. They remained functional, though. They worked efficiently. She brought her weight and her tens of feet and her metal-sheathed hands down on Narissa.

Enemy neutralized! Seven raised a satisfied eyebrow in triumph. Annika clutched at relief. The queen reveled in power and hunger.  _ Look at how many bodies this ship holds. Look at the depth and width of the galaxy around you, yellow and green stars dappling the darkness. Look at how we could take all of this into ourselves. Narissa is staining our floor, and we will not have to endure this again if you just … stay … here. _

Annika, not just the child before her new name but the defiant drone after she became Seven, lived on as a small voice reminding Seven she had work to finish elsewhere. 

Seven grabbed at slippery memories to figure out how to unhook at all. The queencell was not designed to be a temporary residence. But she had arrived as a new addition to this cube, the physical hooks not yet under her skin. And she was the queen, able to live and decide under her own volition even if this particular decision chafed against the way the gears of the cube were supposed to turn.

Beside her in the queencell, Elnor stood wide-eyed, terrified. “Are you gonna assimilate me now?”

Seven still saw through the cube’s walls. Now that the queencell touched her, a piece of it had broken off behind her eyes and lodged. She wanted to stay. The voices of the drones sang a lullaby, a comfort all the more compelling because she almost remembered what they used to sound like. She used to be powerful. She used to be the queen’s emissary, made to present their enemy with a voice before they consumed it. Meant to present their food with a mouth. 

She could still feel that whisper drawing her in as a piece instead of a whole, which meant it was not all of her. Which meant she could shake it. “Annika still has work to do,” said the composite person she became. 

She unhooked, gasping in her first breath on her own and holding it like a prized possession. Her back prickled with pain. The shocks only registered now, even though it felt like a days-long ache. She tried to push aside the strings of the cube’s memory, the many, many dying voices of its children—and the comfort in those voices, after all this time. 

Elnor’s expression flashed from skepticism to awe to determination in three fast but utterly discernible bursts. Seven remembered what Picard told her about Elnor’s upbringing—rather little—and his earnest curiosity in the matter of Bjazyl. 

No matter what else, he had been trained as a warrior. “What exactly is the plan now?” Elnor said.

“Save who we can.”

“Hugh.” 

“Where is he?”

“Just out here.”

Elnor slipped out of the queencell and into the intersection of two hallways. It sounded so quiet out there. There should have been voices. Seven should have been able to hear what her drones were doing now that she’d left them by Narissa’s corpse.

_ No. _ Not her drones. The xBs,  _ people _ who were going to be rehabilitated here. They were going to be given new names. 

Like Hugh. She crouched next to him, quickly scanning the neat killing puncture with her enhanced senses and her common senses. The knife caught him in the throat. If he was a drone, he would be recycled without anyone bothering to check whether he was unconscious. 

He wasn’t.

“Can you do anything?” Elnor asked.

“Don’t rush. I don’t know yet.”

“He died protecting me. He deserves better!”

How old was this kid? Seven swung around and met his eyes. “You’re right. He does.”

“So can you do it?”

She turned back to the body. “You sure do ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

“Yes. It helps me assess the situation.” He said it with a distinct sense of having heard the phrase said to him before.

Seven spread her fingers on the rumpled fabric of Hugh’s jacket. The omniscience of the queencell jack wasn’t necessary for her to do a basic diagnostic. The nanoprobes in her blood knew his.  _ This drone is dying,  _ she would have said once. Since she had long practice at translating diagnostics like that, she would have said it to Elnor more kindly. “As long as his cortical node implant isn’t damaged, maybe I can save him. It’ll just take …” 

She pressed down on Hugh’s neck.  A glance at his face, laugh lines between implant scars, was a bad idea. Even as she clinically pressed her skin and metal against his skin, she was thinking about Icheb. How many of the people she had leaned this close to were dead now? Icheb, Bjayzl … how easy it would be to heed the flickering lights of the cube, the soft countdown of data, the mutter and shout of all these voices so close to her.

This  _ shouldn’t  _ work. It was mad Picard-optimism to think it would, but, she also had data thrumming along in the back of her head.  Residual connection wasn’t unheard of, but she had forced the queencell away. Was it the ship itself that kept intruding in her thoughts? Or the part of her she had discovered in the queencell? She had known it would be this way.  _ I might not want to let them go.  _

She heard the hiss as the injection tubuals on her hand opened. She pressed directly into the wound to inject him with her nanoprobes.  _ If  _ she was right, she was still running with residual queen-energy from the mini-collective she had created.  Hugh’s  nanoprobes wouldn’t be able to resist the order to reknit his body. 

He would  _ hate  _ that. 

The voices of the cube still babbled at her. Maybe she was imagining them, or maybe this cube had been  _ waiting _ , queenless, for so long, some buildup of energy even she didn’t understand infecting her … 

… the mutter and shout, the pleasant burn in her back, the new vision in her eyes—so much wider and with such higher resolution than she had now! Such control, such power, no regret or disgust or horror at all. 

Time passed. 

“…a minute.” Seven felt like she was emerging out of a deep fog.

“That took a lot more than a minute,” said Elnor.

Seven rounded on him. Her boot slammed onto the floor and the sound echoed around the hallway, bounding from onyx ceiling to green-threaded floor. “We lose no one else today.”

For the second time in half an hour, Elnor’s eyebrows reached his hairline. The “Yes ma’am,” didn’t hit his mouth but Seven could see it in every line of his face. 

Captain Janeway would have liked this kid. He was a foundling, but direct enough and canny enough to talk like an officer already. 

Seven stood up. “It will take longer. His body is repairing itself right now. We will just have to wait.” She threw her jacket on the floor. “And I need to see what was done to me.” 

Elnor lingered. Seven gave him a pointed look. 

“I was raised as a Qwot Milat,” Elnor said. “They changed clothes in front of each other most of the time. Some told me to leave. Others did not. I do not usually find it upsetting. Do you?” His expression remained sincere, his eyes as flatly uncompromising as a cat’s. 

“Truth nuns,” Seven said. “That explains a lot. I’m not undressing. I need to check these wounds. You can sit by the intersection of the hallways, if you must.”

His soft steps whispered to the other side of the hallway.

“Living in the world is fascinating.” Elnor was looking at the wall. “Did you know I’ve never met a Borg before? I’ve heard about them, of course. But these seem to be different. More peaceful. Unless you’re in control of them, of course.”

“They’re peaceful because they’re institutionalized.” Seven’s fingertips found fever-hot pinprick puncture wounds on her back. The pain didn’t get worse when she touched them. She’d take that as a good sign. She had no horror of implants, but with the Romulans not likely to stop fighting, she needed her body in peak shape. “From what Picard said, Hugh was trying to free us. To let us be people. It is not always an easy process.” 

_ Remember Janeway? Remember Icheb? Remember when they marveled at your implants and your mottled head, your ferocity and your confusion?  _ Voices thrummed up around Seven as pain flared on her back. She snatched her hand away. 

“I can see that,” Elnor said. “And now the Tal Shiar makes it so much more difficult. I did not expect my life to lead me here.”

“Do you need to get something off your chest?”

“No! I have only this thin shirt.”

Seven blinked. “Has Picard taught you about metaphor?”

“I know about this from  _ The Three Musketeers _ . Our plight could symbolize something?” 

Seven rested her arms back at her side, her shirts falling over her pierced spine. “Sometimes it’s good to express your fears. I don’t usually find it helpful, though.” 

“Yes!” Elnor turned around. “Exactly. I mean, I’m afraid of not being able to get back to Picard, but … we’ve taken out so many Tal Shiar already. Between the two of us, I think we have a chance? But now I’m discovering so many new things, and am trying to find out whether to be afraid of Borg.” 

It was a relief for Seven to hear that someone had to decide. She was used to people seeing a horde behind her wherever she went, no matter what they said about acceptance. 

“Ex-Borg.” Hugh’s voice croaked from the other side of the room. 

“Hugh!” Elnor fell to his knees and curled up to Hugh’s side, slumping against his chest. Hugh sat up gingerly and put his arms around him. With Elnor’s height Seven could hardly see anything more of Hugh over Elnor’s hair. 

“Come on,” she said, and moved to Hugh’s side to pick him up under the arm. Elnor took his weight on the other side. “How do you feel?”

“Half dead,” Hugh said bemusedly. He gingerly tipped his head, as if trying to see the scar on his neck. “I thought she had me.”

“I was thinking the same thing!” Elnor said in great relief. 

Seven shook her head.

“What happened?” Hugh said. He stopped and tried to stand on his own, swaying. 

“We won,” said Elnor.

Hugh’s arm was getting heavy on Seven’s shoulders. “So f—”

Her world turned to static. Whispered words lulled her.  _ We are waiting for you. Join us.  _ Now Hugh was the one holding her up, the whole chain of them swaying. 

Seven wrenched herself away from Hugh. “No! They can’t get to you too.” 

The two of them faced each other, feet planted, Elnor now the one off-balance and clinging to Hugh’s arm, unable to be helped or hurt by the nanoprobes working in Hugh’s system or the poison of the queencell.

Not yet.

_ You could use him. Elnor is young and strong. He’d make a good drone.  _

“I need to go,” Seven said.

“Where?” Hugh’s face fell.

“Nearby.” She looked over his shoulder.

“She interfaced with the cube,” Elnor told Hugh matter-of-factly.

“Oh.” Hugh blinked. For a terrible, intoxicating moment Seven imaged him bowing to her. 

“I’m going to destroy the queencell,” Seven said. “Stay here or come with me. Your decision is irrelevant.” 

She started walking. 

“It won’t stop whatever you’re feeling,” Hugh called from behind her. “The cube does strange things to us. It did to … it did to Picard, too. Don’t be sure you can hear a queen until you’re sure the cube isn’t making you want one.”

She looked over her shoulder. “What if I want to become one?”

Hugh’s expression was stony. Then he waved his free hand. “Destroy the cell.”

“I know this isn’t the right time for hesitation, exactly, but doesn’t destroying the cell mean we can’t control the cube any more?” Elnor offered.

“The cradle is just a cradle,” Hugh said. “The network is everywhere and will still work passively. But as an expression of how the xBs will no longer be controlled … it’s as good a gesture as any.”

In silence, Seven scavenged the bodies of the Tal Shiar guards she and Elnor had killed. It was grim work she did by rote, idly noticing the difference between sword-cuts and disruptor burns. A few of them were carrying low-slung disruptors that could melt metal. She picked one up.

The men stood beside one of the sliding walls that had once obscured the queencell. The claustrophobic warren could so easily feel like a comforting womb instead, couldn’t it? Seven stepped inside. So innocuous, the black walls and elevated platform, until she heard the silence so loud in comparison to the whispers. Decades of work would not be undone here. This would be a gesture, but sometimes dramatic gestures helped.

Captain Janeway had stood just so, a phaser rifle hanging from her arm.

Seven opened fire. Lasers ripped into the walls, revealing halls behind the hidden walls. Molten metal ran to the floor and pooled. Whispers flared up around her.  _ You’re killing them! You’re stranding them! We’re so  _ alone—

Her finger started to cramp on the trigger.

_ You’re killing yourself! You could have been so much more! You could have had everything neat and clean, protocol after protocol, no questions, no confusion, no Bjayzl asking you what you stand for, no Elnor looking thankfully at you as you pull that trigger. You could have had all of us. You could have  _ been _ all of us!  _

The cube worked like an ecosystem. Except that killing the apex predator wouldn’t force the rest to flourish into disease and decay; it would prevent any more slaughter. 

_ I’m Seven. I’m a person. And so are all of you. And we’re going to live.  _

She screamed along with the last shot she put into the delicate mechanisms of the neural interface. Then Seven breathed out a breath she felt she had been holding since the spinal jacks went in. The metal around her slowly creaked as it cooled. Her mind felt so wonderfully quiet. 

She turned to Hugh. He would know that asking him for permission was just as important as the content of the question. “You know this cube the best. I want to help the rest of these people. Where do we start?” 

Hugh looked bright-eyed up from under Elnor’s arm, and they began the work. 


End file.
